My guess: Since the bezel is thin on three sides, they didn’t want to give the phone a big forehead by planting a comparatively big black bar at the top. I thi

My guess: Since the bezel is thin on three sides, they didn’t want to give the phone a big forehead by planting a comparatively big black bar at the top. I think their solution is bad. The inset makes the front of the phone look busy/unclean/techie. It’s lacking elegance. They should have reduced the left and right bezel to nearly zero and added a small bezel at the bottom that matches the one at the top to create symmetry. Basically, just shrunken iPhone 7 bezels on all sides and a rectangular screen. Edit: If rumors were true and they wanted to put Touch ID below the screen, their goal might have been a phone with the same bezel thickness on all sides. But Touch ID below the screen didn’t work and they had to add sensors to compensate – compromising by creating an inset.